It's been known for awhile that modern humans aren't the only tool users. Neanderthals and other archaic humans are straightforward examples, but western chimpanzees also do it pretty frequently. Even outside the apes, macaques are known to use stone tools for foraging and sexual gratification.
Sure and I guess Neanderthal tools would have produced similar tool shapes to those produced by historical humans.
What this paper is saying is that S.Am. primates may be responsible for primitive tools previously associated/attributed with/to humans (due to how they look/characteristics) in some South American sites but this aspect casts some doubt on the origin of those sites and thus affects chronological occupation of the continent by people.
Which puts into question the naming of homo habilis (="handy man", that 2.5 My old Oldowan tool industry you seem to mention comes from) and australopithecus (responsible for Lomekwian) as "not-homo".
Tool use is of course much older (other primates) and other animals also do it : dolphins, crows...
Can this capuchin-monkey example be called "tool industry" ?
They might not have expertise, but they know how to write. And (from my own, admittedly layman's searches) I haven't seen anything contradicting the main claims.
No, it doesn't : to be able to lie you need to have expertise. You can bullshit though. Or, and so far this is my impression here, you can also take the expertise of others and present it better (that's what the best science journalists do !)
Question for any archaeologists or zoologists. Do seagulls using the coastal rocks to break open oysters and clams by dropping them from the air qualify as using tools? If not, what is this type of activity considered?
That's a good question (I think, I'm not one of those either) - it's about as close as they could possibly come with the body parts available, so if we're interested in the intelligence and ability to reason about using things to do other things ('tools') then surely it is.
Surely it's possible for an animal even to know its limitations, and desire to do something outside of them. Like I might think 'if only I could fly up and fix my gutter', say.
Sure, I just think it's interesting, and that surely you do need to think about why you're interested in whether an animal 'makes' or uses 'tools' to know where that cut-off should be, otherwise it's a bit arbitrary and self-fulfilling ('only humans and some apes use tools' ... 'where tool is defined as a manufactured object held in the hand'!) isn't it?
IIRC, Bees build their hives with their own secretions. I see this as categorically different than animals that make nests out of various items laying around. In the case of a beaver I think it is more advanced than a birds nest because they actually harvest specific trees instead of using what’s on the ground already.
